DINING WITH DEVILS -- A Tasmanian Thriller

by GORDON AALBORG

  “Stop it, Kendall. You’ll kill him,” she cried.

  “Good!” And he managed two more thumps before he suddenly sagged and slumped over the doctor’s now unconscious body. Kendall was gasping, his shoulders heaved with his attempts to draw breath, and when he finally spoke his voice was more a whisper than a roar.

  “You’re right. Enough. Find something. Cut me loose. And hurry,” he gasped, not moving his fingers from the doctor’s throat, although he seemed to have released the pressure.

  Kirsten managed, by stretching to the limit of the chains that still held her tied waist-to-waist to Kendall, to reach a knife on the folding table. But her fingers shook so much when she tried to cut Kendall’s wrists free that she had to use both hands, and nearly dropped the knife when Kendall reached out to take it from her.

  “Hold steady,” he said, as if she could actually control the tremors that shook her entire body. And his fingers, too, trembled as he slid the knifepoint along to snick the cable ties that joined her wrists.

  Kendall still knelt on Stafford, and once Kirsten’s hands were free he turned quickly as if to ensure that his opponent remained comatose. Or to finish the job – Kirsten could see the impulse even as it formed in Kendall’s mind, as his gaze locked on the doctor’s exposed throat.

  “No,” she said. “No . . . please.”

  When Kendall turned to look at her, she was shocked by the bleakness in his eyes, by the apparent lack of any and all emotion. His eyes were hard as river stones, blank of any expression she could read. It was, indeed, all she could do to keep from reeling back, away from those eyes, away from the iciness in them.

  Then he sucked in a huge breath, sighed, and she saw the lights come on again inside him. He glanced once more at Stafford, but this time it was only a cursory glance, thrown back as he lurched to his feet and reached out to turn Kirsten around.

  “Free . . . first,” he said, his voice strangely soft after the rage she’d heard in it only an instant before. “Then hugs.”

  Quickly, easily, he slashed through the cable tie holding the chain around her waist. Handed her the knife so she could do the same for him, watching, she knew, to make sure that Stafford wasn’t about to magically awaken and spoil things.

  And then, indeed, came the hugs. Kirsten flowed into his arms, barely able to breathe, barely able to think. Content just to wallow in the ocean of relief that surrounded her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ian Boyd was angry. He’d been angry even before setting out on the doctor’s little errand, and it got worse once he was alone and could think more or less at his own speed.

  The bastard kept me rifle! I shouldn’t have let him do that. Why did I?

  Ian truly didn’t know why, only that – as on the various occasions he’d been treated at the Birch clinic during the summers when Ralph Stafford was in charge – he’d found the Canadian psychologist a presence difficult to ignore or disobey. Not like the officers in the military, not like the various police and legal authorities he’d faced in the many years since. Stafford had something they didn’t, and while Ian couldn’t define it and couldn’t bother to try, it gave the doctor power over him. He recognized that, even as he detested it.

  Not fair I should have to be the one to get him that stupid old man and that bloody evil dog. Shoulda sent Rosie. Maybe she could handle the mongrel without getting her balls bit off. Fuckin’ dog hates me . . . always has. Old Viv doesn’t like me much, either.

  By the time Ian reached St. Helens, he’d worked himself into a fair snit over the entire exercise, so he fell into the logic of habit and stopped for a beer. Then two. Then . . . more. Many more. By the time he left the pub, far into the night, he was so pissed he could hardly walk and it was too dark to search for the clandestine Ruger 10-22 he had stashed away safely. It, like the Vaime, was an illegal weapon under Little Johnny Howard’s draconian gun laws, but Ian cared naught for that. The Ruger was his possum gun, although he’d also shot a stag or two with it. Fitted with a six-power scope and a custom-made silencer. Not much range, but it uttered only a whispered phfffft when used with subsonic rounds. A handy, efficient weapon for a poacher.

  He’d also scored a few pills to top up the hoard he’d filched from Rose’s purse, and between the pills and the grog, lapsed into a stupor that lasted him well into this day and clouded his mind when he finally did waken. Three beers into the morning, he felt better. Well enough, at least, to be able to address and then ignore the warning signals his addled mind kept flashing.

  Bring them both alive, the man said. S’pose he thinks it’ll be easy, but he don’t know that damned dog. Mongrel bastard of a thing. I get anywhere within cooee of the bugger and he’ll go spare . . . yapping and carrying on like a pork chop. Old Viv’s not much better – the old fart’s rough as guts, he is. Dunno why the doc wants either of them . . . too old and tough to eat, that’s for sure.

  By the time he’d remembered where he’d stashed the Ruger and then actually found it (he’d been sober when he hid it, and had done so carefully and well), Ian was well on the way to talking himself out of the entire concept. Except . . . Rosie would have more drugs that he’d like for himself, and the doc would also have plenty, for sure and certain. He’d said so, and Ian believed him. No sense letting the chance go by.

  There’s an old chunk of trawl net I put away somewhere, if I can just find the damned thing. Might work to get the damned dog under control. If I can manage that, old Viv’ll be easy enough to handle, I reckon.

  Remembering that he was supposed to have brought man and dog back to Stafford the day before did not help Ian’s addled brain to formulate anything like a sensible plan for the operation. Not that it would have mattered much – Ian was the sort who always favored a direct approach to problems.

  So once he’d eventually found the scrap of trawl net, having devoted half an hour first to disassembling the Ruger, cleaning it thoroughly, then reassembling it, it was time for another beer. Then another. By the time he set out for the shepherd’s hut where old Viv lived, the day was pretty much shot and Ian wasn’t much better.

  He drove straight up the highway from St. Helens, oblivious to his condition at first, then smartening up a trifle when three motorists in a row beeped at him for his erratic driving. So he swung off on the road through Priory, in behind the heights of Gentle Annie, across Dead Horse and Mother Logans creeks and eventually, working westerly through the maze of bush tracks he knew so well, around the back of Platt’s Lookout and on to the old man’s hut on Misery bush run.

  And throughout the tortuous drive over rutted, often barely navigable tracks, Ian gave free rein to his growing indignation at having to do this at all. By the time he reached Viv’s hut he’d worked himself into a proper snit.

  The only good thing was knowing what to expect, and in this Ian wasn’t disappointed. The instant his vehicle came to a full stop outside the hut, Bluey rollicked around the corner of the building, already yapping and snarling and showing his teeth. When he realized it was Ian, whom Bluey thoroughly disliked, the yodeling intensified.

  And when Ian opened the door of his bush ute and stepped out, the length of trawl net in hand, the silly dog ran straight into it, en route to his attempt to take Ian’s leg off one mouthful at a time. It was so easy as to be laughable, and Ian did laugh. Then he cursed as the damned dog got a fang through a hole in the net and nicked Ian’s thumb.

  “Get out of it, you bloody mongrel,” he cursed, and kicked at the dog, who thrashed around in the net more actively than any fish ever had. Bluey growled, snapped ineffectively, and returned to his writhing attempts at escape. Ian ignored him, reached into the truck for the Ruger. He’d just smack the silly bugger across the head, he thought. Calm him down a bit.

  But there wasn’t time. He turned to find himself the object of attack from a different front. Old Viv, twenty years older and half Ian’s size, was on him with a ferocity that matched that of the old man’s dog. Fists and feet f
lying, the old man was in a frenzy, but doing little actual damage, not least because his attention was divided between fighting Ian and checking to see that the dog was all right.

  “Give over, Viv,” Ian snarled, holding the oldster away with one hand. “I’m just trying to keep the bugger from eating me, is all.” As well to talk to a pesky mosquito; the old man continued to swarm Ian, all flying fists and thrashing feet, but doing no significant damage. Annoying, though. Ian finally lost his patience and used the rifle butt to smack the old man away, hoping that if he could quiet the master he might have a decent chance to subdue the dog.

  Viv went down, a thin line of blood tracking across his brow where the rifle had struck him. Ian turned and made a grab for Bluey, still held by the length of trawl net but not far from getting loose. The dog growled, snapped, and thrashed around, all four short legs scuttling as he fought for purchase and tried to escape the net and eat Ian Boyd at the same time.

  The entire situation had become, in Ian’s eyes, a farce. One that exhausted his slender trove of patience very quickly indeed. Bugger this for a joke. I’ll just shoot the mongrel, and maybe old Viv, too, while I’m at it.

  He charged toward the writhing dog, intent now on kicking the beast into submission, and had his foot raised for the first kick when he caught movement in his peripheral vision and realized the old man had staggered away and into his dwelling. Ian had only seconds to process this information when old Viv emerged again, and this time he had no intention of laying into Ian with fists and boots.

  This time he was going to run him off – or kill him.

  “Get out of it!” he shouted, raising a double-barreled shotgun and peering along it as the weapon trembled in his hands. An old hammer gun, probably – Ian thought – loaded with black powder cartridges, to boot. The twin muzzles looked like cannons to Ian, who reckoned the ancient weapon was older than the diminutive man holding it. The muzzles wavered in a huge circle, testament to the fact that Ian’s blow had left old Viv unsteady; the old man could barely stand upright, was having trouble holding the gun.

  But no trouble firing it. He gave no further warning before pulling one trigger, and Ian leapt in alarm as flame spewed from the shotgun. Flame, and a cloud of smoke that momentarily obscured the old man behind the trigger. Pellets scoured the area between Ian and his vehicle, sending up gouts of sod and twigs and leaves. None touched him, but the edge of the shotgun’s spray pattern was too close for comfort.

  “Jeeesus!” Ian cried, and raced for the safety of the nearby scrub, leaping over the net-enmeshed dog as he high-stepped through scrub and bracken fern, aiming for safety behind the first decent-sized tree he could reach.

  Boom! A second shot, and this time the pellets thrashed the tree branches above him, showering Ian with leaves and bark as he fled. Behind him, the old man’s curses were echoed by screams of outrage from that fuckin’ dog, who was, Ian could see, almost free of the trawl net. The old man scuttled back into his hut, breaking the shotgun as he moved, obviously looking for more ammunition.

  It was a worry. He could outrun the old man, and his Ruger gave him a serious advantage over the ancient shotgun, but the dog . . . ? Ian didn’t think about it very long. Sliding down into a seated shooting stance, solid, totally controlled, he lifted the Ruger and peered through the powerful scope at where Bluey writhed against the strands of trawl net.

  Ian’s piercing whistle stopped the dog for an instant, which was all Ian needed. The trigger was already half-squeezed, he completed the gesture, and the possum gun spat a single round toward the animal. Hardly a sound, it made. Just a phfffft, and Bluey, voice cut off in mid-yelp, sagged into a silent heap beneath the edge of the net he’d so nearly escaped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It all looked exactly the same. For anyone who didn’t know the horrors that had been inflicted in this place, it was merely an abandoned mine site – three old shacks that perched high on the escarpment of Blue Tier, snuggled under towering eucalypts that shadowed the area even at mid-day, their tortured, twisted branches shedding bark like diseased skin.

  It was well past mid-day now, pushing toward the evening of a day in which Charlie had nearly gone crazy trying to get on top of an investigation that hadn’t even been assigned to him, officially. Or at least not specifically to him. Every cop in Tasmania was now alerted to be on the lookout for Dr. Ralph Stafford, infamous serial killer, cannibal, believed until this very morning to have been dead for more than a year and half the world away.

  The Specialist. And this had been his operations center. While working half-yearly stints at Dave Birch’s clinic, the Canadian psychologist had spent his spare time stalking, capturing, killing, and eating young women. Bicycle tourists, usually, girls he somehow lured under his control, then brought to this shadowed, lonely spot for butchering. Charlie shuddered inside just at the thought of what they’d found when that damned dog and his geriatric master had shown them this place.

  Bluey had, to give the beast his due, been responsible for them finding out any of it. Scrounging, or chasing some forest vermin into a chasm in the rocks far below here, at the bottom of the steep escarpment, Bluey had found bones. Human bones. He’d taken one to old Viv. Viv had brought it to Charlie, and eventually the old bushie had guided Charlie to this place, where investigation of an abandoned shaft led police to a veritable charnel house.

  Charlie didn’t need Teague Kendall’s book about the incident to keep the memories fresh. Too fresh. Which is why he hadn’t come near this place again once the investigation was finished. Not once. There were ghosts here. Charlie knew it.

  Ghosts. But no sign whatsoever of Dr. Ralph Stafford. No sign anyone had been anywhere near the place in weeks, maybe even longer than that. Charlie wasn’t the world’s greatest bushman. Old Viv could probably have told him to the day when the last human was here, but that didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have been recently.

  So where else? Where the hell would you go, I wonder? The area round St. Helens was your only patch, far as anybody knows. Christ! Why come back here? Why HERE? It makes no bloody sense.

  Once again Charlie shivered, then shook himself as if by doing so he could rid himself of the ominous atmosphere here in this place. Why here? Why anything, when it concerned a man crazy enough to slaughter and eat people in two countries ten thousand miles apart? A man who should damned well be dead!

  They’d find him, of course. Eventually. But it might turn out to be more of a problem than The Brass anticipated, Charlie thought with a rueful half-smile. The Brass had flooded the state’s police offices with photos of the cannibal doctor, along with copies of the Kirsten abduction photos. Nobody, however, had bothered to recognize that the fuzzy shots from the hotel security system were of a man who didn’t look anything like Ralph Stafford. Except for the occasional very alert policeman. Most of them weren’t sure, from the information they got, if they were to be looking for one man or two.

  Finally taking that issue of Kirsten’s alleged abduction seriously, they’d called upon the media for help, flooded the media, too, with the grainy, indistinct photos. And, for good measure, they’d poured photos of Kirsten and Teague Kendall – separately and together – into the mix.

  Charlie had also distributed the information and photos to his own people. He couldn’t do otherwise. He instructed everyone on duty to devote their time to prowling the town and district, looking, talking to people. He had first searched Dave Birch’s mental health facility, then put people in place there to watch for any sign of Stafford. Or of Rose Chapman. Charlie was certain in his soul that she was somehow part of whatever was going on.

  He had rushed through the day, making telephone calls, guiding his troops, although, in point of fact, they needed little guidance. Charlie’s people were well trained, worked well together, and worked well for him, because he ran a tight but comfortable ship. Most had been in St. Helens long enough to have developed independent sources of information. It was a small town, stran
gers were noticed even during tourist season, and suspicious strangers were reported. Charlie knew that sooner or later, if Stafford was in the area, he would be seen and word would get back to the police.

  But would that happen in time? And how could he speed the process? Charlie knew it was all somehow intertwined . . . all of it. Stafford and Rose Chapman and Kirsten and Teague. There was simply no way it could be otherwise, even though none of it yet made much sense. Yet.

  He’d been hoping to find some answers here, certain somehow in his instincts that Stafford would return to this place. To gloat, if nothing else. Or perhaps to collect something he might have left behind the first time? Something they might have missed, despite the amazingly thorough search that had been done of the area?

  But the aged shacks were just as Charlie had last seen them, huddled beneath the trees and staring out over the forest below with unseeing eyes. Like Stafford’s victims, Charlie thought, and shuddered inside despite himself.

  No sign at all that Stafford might have returned. No sign that anybody had been in the vicinity for weeks, perhaps months. No fresh tire tracks, no evidence of the shacks having been opened by anyone. Curtains of spider-webs revealed that much.

  So where the hell are you, you bastard? It’s somewhere here on my patch . . . I’d bet my soul on it. But where? Talk to me, dammit!

  But from the gloomy silence surrounding came not a single word. Charlie couldn’t stay here, didn’t want to, truth be known. What he’d been after was some sort of sign, and he was pragmatic enough to recognize the silliness of that type of thinking. So he turned the vehicle around and headed back through the maze of bush tracks that eventually brought him to the highway again, and from there, steadily eastward and down, past the Pyengana turnoff and eventually to the wide spot in the road that some maps said was Goshen.